Almost all storage solutions deal with files and file systems. Unless a volume is formatted with some sort of hybrid volume manager, then the underlying operating system (OS) presents a hierarchical structure of files and directories. Systems are known to process file system metadata, such as systems to list files and directories, find the directory to which a file or directory belongs, or to perform aggregation and summaries of directories.
A problem in the prior art is that conventionally it was hard to efficiently compress file system metadata while also supporting other goals, such as searchability and scalability.
Therefore, what is desired is a new system, method, and computer readable medium for storing and processing file system metadata.